THE STRAIGHT POOP ABOUT THE PENTAGON

The Pentagon has an inordinately large number of toilet facilities on its premises--about twice that needed for an office facility of its size. And, despite the assertions of various anti-government or anti-military groups, it is not because the occupants of the building are so full of you-know-what. The real reason is far more prosaic.

The construction of the gargantuan complex started on September 11, 1941,* and it was amazingly finished and dedicated by January 15, 1943. It was (and is) located in Virginia. In the early 1940s, Virginia segregation law required that there be provided separate restrooms for "colored" and "white." Whether or not this statute applied to the Pentagon is debatable, in light of the fact that the governor of Virginia had given the War Department exclusive jurisdiction over the property and the additional fact that President Roosevelt had signed an executive order banning discrimination against federal employees on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin.**

There was no actual debate on the matter, however, as Col. Leslie Groves,*** chief of operations of the construction project, ordered that a s---load of bathrooms be provided in accordance with Virginia segregation policy.

In order to comply both with the dictates of the Colonel and the executive order of the Commander-in-Chief, the final construction of the project included the full panoply of potties; however, the doors of the restrooms were not painted to designate their use by any particular race--although one employee did chalk "colored" and "white" notations on them for a brief period until strongly encouraged to discontinue the practice.

For a more detailed analysis of Pentagon bathroom habits, check out the article in Snopes.

*I do not know whether or not it was coincidence that terrorists tried to destroy the facility exactly sixty years later.

**Actual desegregation of the Armed Forces would have to wait for Harry Truman in 1948.

***In his spare time, Groves was in charge of the Manhattan Project and building the atomic bomb.

By David B. Gleason from Chicago, IL (The Pentagon)
 [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

Thanks to Michael Green for the heads up on this factoid!